Stepping into the world at large

Tim FarrellChoreographer Wayne McGregor's company Random Dance presents the East Coast premiere of "Entity" at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University. With their focus on the human body, even abstract dances can tell us something about ourselves. “Entity,” the fascinating piece by British choreographer Wayne McGregor that opened on Thursday at the Alexander Kasser Theater in Montclair, is rigorously impersonal. Yet with this piece McGregor’s company, Random Dance, asks compelling questions about our place in the world.

In what appears to be a sexy lab experiment, McGregor turns a microscope on his wriggling ensemble to analyze the little critters’ motivations. Do they couple instinctually, like fruit flies? Or do conscious decisions spur their interactions? The dance is in two parts separated by changes of scenery, costume and music, and by a dramatic shift in movement quality.

Part One takes place in the light of consciousness. In a rational space bounded by low scrims, darkness is banished to an outer realm. The dancers wear their personal DNA signatures on white T-shirts. Yet from a distance this script looks smudged and indistinct, ironically resembling a trail of ants in this antiseptic setting.

What frustrates or provokes here is the absence of any apparent motive for the gestures, and a complexity that hides the dance’s formal structure behind a façade of seemingly capricious movement. The dancers appear self-involved and unable to control their extroverted flailing, so that duets are hopeless entanglements. Everybody struggles.

At the moments when individuals should seem most purposeful — striding from one place to another, or halting and waiting for their next opportunity — their faces are blank. So much for consciousness.

Curiously, the instinctual second half of “Entity” feels more controlled. As the side panels rise, the action appears to sink into a dark interior space. Video images flash across the panels like rapid dreams, blending organic patterns like algae blooms or tree bark with mathematical equations. A new electronic score, by Jon Hopkins, alternates between pulsing rhythms and sentimental piano tunes.

The dancers loosen up here — we all do. They lose their shirts, DNA be damned, stretching sensually. The movement melts, but sudden impulses also give whiplash endings to phrases. Although connections between individuals remain fleeting, they seem to matter. Whether sniffing each other’s outstretched limbs, or placing the palm of a hand firmly against a partner’s belly, these nameless characters know what they want. Jessica Wright cradles Paolo Mangiola’s head in her lap, and, at the very end, Neil Fleming Brown drags Wright offstage caveman style.

McGregor’s choreographic framework is more formal in the second half, with unison passages supplying a sense of global order. The joke, of course, is that in the second half of “Entity,” this order is supposedly natural and not of human design.

Do we know why we act the way we do, or do we merely think we know? McGregor shows us inhabiting a natural world so large and intricate that it overshadows our desires.